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Hi everyone. I'm here to answer questions about my new graphic novel-format biography "Snowden" (about the NSA whistleblower), my cartoons, columns, previous books (maybe about Afghanistan?), whatever you feel like. I’m here with SARAH HARRISON of the Courage Foundation and Wikileaks, who has experienced Snowden’s saga first-hand, and also with JESSELYN RADACK, who was an ethics advisor to the Department of Justice when she disclosed that the FBI had interrogated John Walker Lindh, the “American Taliban,” without a lawyer present in an obvious ethics violation. She is one of Snowden's lawyers, now with Expose Facts. Ask Us Anything!

We'll be here from 4 to 5 pm EST. We'll follow up over the next couple of days afterwards to reply to the most popular questions we missed. All others will be processed as if by government, i.e. we’ll ignore them.

EDIT:
JESSELYN: Thanks everyone.
SARAH: it's very late here in Berlin. Thanks everyone!
TED: I'm heading off to give a talk about press freedom just north of Albany New York, but thank you everyone for your awesome questions and especially to Sarah and Jessalyn and the nice folks at Reddit for allowing us to do this. It was fun. I'll be back tomorrow to answer any questions that came in overnight. Ciao!

After the Boston Marathon bombing, Ted Rall was vocal on social media that first responders shouldn't be singled out for praise because they were just doing their jobs. How does he square that with his own repeated complaints about being passed over for awards and honours for just doing his own job?

There are both practical and legal considerations to go over. As Jesselyn said, it is important to have an idea of what you're up against. Most whistleblowers in this day and age have to consider the implications of digital technologies they use, and how that might affect their choice. In this case, one of the best things you can do is heed the advice of technical experts, and ensure you know how to protect yourself. WikiLeaks' submission and contact systems (https://wikileaks.org/index.en.html#submit) give you some advice on the steps you can take, and there are many thorough guides to digital caution, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (https://ssd.eff.org/).

It's really hard to tell someone that they should risk the wrath of the US government or some other powerful and wealthy entity or corporation that can destroy their lives. Although certainly taken risks, I've never been in the same position as someone like Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden. I think this might be a good question for Sarah or Jessalyn...

By consulting an attorney, we can help you identify that safest ways in which to blow the whistle, including (like Sarah said) the safest use of digital security where relevant. I don't think there's a risk on the recipient's end (WikiLeaks, SecureDrop, etc), but rather on the user's end.

In general, it seems like the current state of political cartoons is quite dire. The majority of currently working political cartoonists seem little more than partisan cheerleaders with minimal artistic talent. The profession seems to be barely hanging on, mostly because papers feel the need to still print the occasional political cartoon. Even developments like the rise of alternative cartoonists in the 80s and 90s seemed to have fizzled out, mostly becoming another minor note on the internet. Things just seem bleak, especially in comparison to political cartooning in the past. What are your thoughts on the industry?

You summed it up very well. The traditional model of editorial cartooning, including the alternative weeklies where I got my start, is dead. I had to sound clichéd, but it is true that there's a lot of potential on the Internet. Certainly there's a lot of good editorial cartooning going on. The problem is that it's hard for political cartoonists to make a living drawing political cartoons the way that that we used to. What we really need is for some enterprising politically oriented news websites and commentary websites to start hiring cartoonists the way that they hire writers. All it takes is one. On the Internet, cartoons get a lot more clicks than prose. So as soon as someone takes a chance – Huffington Post, Slate, Salon, Intercept - they'll see that it works. The web and mobile are graphic media. Yet they're largely ignoring good photography and cartoons. What's up with that?

By voting. By following what's going on in Congress and weighing in on it. By signing petitions. By speaking up and speaking out. And by blowing the whistle on gross fraud, waste, abuse, illegality, and dangers to public health and safety. Also, build encryption into your everyday computer use. The biggest enemy here is apathy.

Seems like I only hear about opposition movements to dastardly Corporate or Surveillance State inspired bills ... SOPA, TPP, CISA, etc. Now we have the spread of terror(the emotion, I'm more worried about being hit by a bus than extremists)/Islamophobia and global monopolies, and it seems like more and more the rights of people are eroded.

Is there a political party or something that is actually pushing to pass bills that establish rights for people? instead of just defending right we already have. Is there something we can legitimately positively propose instead of protest!?

Everyone loves a martyr, but nobody should want to have to be one! Anyway I wish you luck with your book, and thank Sarah for her courage in the work shes done.

Seems to me that if Americans are in greater danger now is a result of Snowden's leaks, the government ought to provide evidence that that's the case. So far they haven't. What's really going on here is that the government has been exposed as breaking the law on a massive scale, and now they're trying to change the subject by pointing at the person who exposed them.

The only one in greater danger because of Snowden's revelations is the NSA and its apologist defenders. The government loves to fear-monger and say that we are in greater danger as a result of Snowden's leaks. They say that about every whistleblower. Tom Drake "would have the blood of soldiers on his hands." Chelsea Manning caused "infinite harm." But when it came time to submit a "damage assessment in Manning's court martial, the State Department couldn't come up with one. The common element in all these cases is the government's hyperbolic (and factually wrong) fear-mongering.

Part of the sacrifice of those in the military is that they knowingly put themselves in a less secure and less safe situation. You do it to protect the Constitution, yet at the same time say that cutrailing it is a-ok because that sacrifice should be made safe and secure.
So we, instead, lose our rights because you decide to defend them and to do so you must curtail them. See how full of shit this line of reasoning happens to be?

You are asking what rights are curtailed?
Are you blind? The NSA is the embodiment of unconstitutional searches, the extrajudicial actions the gov't takes in the name of security. Shit...
Those contractors are a nice work-around the argument. They may not be enlisted but they are doing military work! Same concept.
I am all for keeping you as safe as possible. I am. But should we just obey-citizen to provide it? Should we give the gov't unlimited discretion to achive this?

There is a lot of daylight between "no government is perfect" and the breathtaking scale of lawbreaking and aggressive foreign policy crimes being committed by the U.S. regime. "What rights [of mine] have been curtailed?" How about my right to talk to my mom on the phone, or watch porn online, without the NSA eavesdropping?

It is the typical game of shoot the messenger. Snowden revealed the escalation of cyberwarfare by the United States - a process that is hazardous on a planetary scale. He showed how US agencies engage in "parallel construction" - a serious attack on due process. He demonstrated that the government had transitioned in secret to the sort of global mass surveillance that the authoritarian regimes of history, such as the Stasi, could only ever have dreamed of.

At the same time, the government has tried to distract attention from all of these things, by trying to claim that the mere disclosure of this information placed people in danger. We see this all the time with WikiLeaks too. In 2010, Pentagon spokespeople were claiming we had blood on our hands. We don't, and in fact, during Chelsea Manning's trial, the Pentagon was forced to retract that claim under oath. It's just spin, designed to change the subject. But if we are really worried about danger, we should think about these reckless decisions of the government revealed by Snowden, and where it is taking us.

I see Ted's called it a night and it's very late here in Berlin. Thanks everyone!

As far as threats to individual freedom are concerned, the only game in town is the use of the internet and associated technologies as a mechanism of surveillance and control. Not just by authoritarian government, but also by the new form of surveillance capitalism represented by Google and Facebook. This is a real problem, and may become the defining issue of this century. My editor at WikiLeaks, Julian Assange has written extensively about this, and at WikiLeaks we are very well placed to see these threats taking shape, because our work is arranged around trying to address them. Julian wrote a short essay for the New York Times, which addresses the main points here (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/opinion/julian-assange-on-living-in-a-surveillance-society.html) But if you want to read more about it, I'd recommend his book When Google Met WikiLeaks, and Cypherpunks, here: http://www.orbooks.com/julian-assange/

To quote my father, who was an aeronautical engineer, technology always cuts both ways. Since we're here to talk about the Edward Snowden leaks, there's no doubt that the US government is using technology to violate privacy rights and thus threaten personal liberty. However, hackers like those from Anonymous can give the oppressors a hard time too. But this is really question for a technologist and there are many books written about this.

Question for Sarah Harrison. You were with Edward Snowden and I'm assuming have communicated with various other whistleblowers while working with Wikileaks. What's the biggest reason there are not more whistleblowers and what can be done to make people trying to expose corruption and injustices feel more safe in the short term?

I see through my work at WikiLeaks that courage actually is contagious - whistleblowers keep coming forward. You can see through WikiLeaks publications on the NSA and CIA this year and the Drone Papers recently. The US government does everything it can to try to provide a deterrent, but when we got Snowden asylum we demonstrated that there is a possibility other than that 35 year prison sentence that Manning received. We also showed there were people and organisations willing to stand up and assist, despite the risks. As for doing more to help - the best way is to support organisations and projects like the Courage Foundation that are doing that essential support work, so we can demonstrate that there is a safety net for those who put themselves at risk for the benefit of the public (https://couragefound.org)

Rand Paul was probably the strongest of the major presidential candidates concerning privacy rights and the NSA revelations, and also had the nicest things to say about Edward Snowden. Unfortunately, he is not a major factor in the Republican primary campaign this year so I don't think he will be the nominee. Among those who remain, I would go with Bernie Sanders.

The most important practical information the public should know is how to inform itself. This is the most important kind of knowledge, because it contains in it the potential for all other learning. If you know how to inform yourself, all other practical and factual knowledge is within your grasp. This is a foundational value of WikiLeaks - the importance of the historical record. And this is why whistleblowers are so important.

The government lies. Every day. Always question government authority, especially when it is exercised in secret. That is the hallmark of a totalitarian regime, not a healthy democracy. Protect your privacy. Your autonomy is what makes you the individual that you are.

I think drones are uniquely heinous because they allow one man, the President, to play prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner of anyone on the entire planet, including Americans, with no due process. What's more diabolical than that?

Unless you're suggesting that the president is personally maintaining and piloting his own predator drone fleet, I fail to see how drone based assassinations are more heinous than other black ops authorized by the president. That hardly qualifies them as 'unique'.

Part of what makes it so diabolical is the total ignoring of our Constitution...and seeming to get away with it. Were the "founding fathers" naive to think that the three branches of government would never collude?

Every governmental system contains the seeds of its destruction. You could see the breakdown in Bush v. Gore, for example. The US Supreme Court didn't have jurisdiction over the disputed Florida election (in the States, states oversee elections, making the Florida State Supreme Court the final arbiter), yet they ruled anyway, installing Bush, who'd actually lost Florida. Who could overrule SCOTUS? Then there's what you allude to, collusion between three branches of government.

When I interviewed Bernie Sanders for my next book, he clearly stated that he thought that there wasn't really a major difference between drones and other weapons. As long as you can kill someone, does it make a difference what kind of weapon used to kill them with? But in the book "A Theory of the Drone" is clear that drones really are a new kind of weapon, one in which war becomes permanent because there is literally no price whatsoever to pay politically or in terms of the lives of your soldiers or pilots. War goes from being too easy to being completely without consequence.
Also, the cavalier way in which targets are chosen by president Obama and, before him, President Bush, is nothing short of disgusting, not to mention totally illegal. These are extrajudicial assassinations. As numerous studies have shown, at least 90% of the victims are innocent bystanders who simply happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. As for the 10% or so who were actually targeted, none of those are people actually threaten the people of the United States of America. They are usually just local "militants" fighting against the government of, say, Yemen or Pakistan. Frankly, if I lived in Yemen or Pakistan, I would be fighting to overthrow the government too.

Segueing from this a bit, but to what extent do you feel that lives lost contributed to changing public opinion in the Iraq war, compared to it's less-than-honest nature, economic cost, and simple war fatigue?

Is there some angle via the courts that individual citizens could sue to restore our right to privacy? Perhaps some sort of class action against the corporations enabling the spying that would make it stop?

The main barrier to ANY kind of lawsuit in the courts over surveillance was 1) stading (the plaintiffs couldn't prove THEY themselves were actually surveiled) and 2) standing. Thanks to Snowden's revelations, the judicial branch of government has been unlocked and suits are moving forward. While a class action against the corporations is an interesting idea, they cost a lot and take years. I think corporations hear it loud and clear when customers vote with their feet and go to a more secure carrier that is not cooperating with the government. Also, customer pressure has helped in getting corporations to submit transparency reports, and deny backdoors to the government.

I really love this question. While I was well aware of the fact that the NSA was spying on everyone including me, the research involved has convinced me that there is absolutely no privacy for anyone whatsoever, and that opponents of the state, no matter how nonviolent, are in great danger under this system. I don't feel safe until the NSA is closed and this entire system of government is replaced by something that works for ordinary people.

Do you feel that the methods Edward Snowden used to make his disclosures harmed his case? Specifically, his choice to release through the Guardian and Glenn Greenwald and his choice to make himself the 'face' of the issue?

Funny, I have the opposite impression, that Snowden never wanted to make himself the story, or for it to become personalized as the media loves to do. Considering the way things played out, it looks like Snowden could have done much worse: the Guardian and Greenwald kept the leaked information secure, presented it to the public in an intelligent way, and then The Intercept kept investigative journalism going. One could nitpick - nitpitcking is my thing - but no, I don't think Edward's methods harmed his case. I don't actually think his case has been harmed in any way, from a PR standpoint. It's the NSA and the government that have some explaining to do.

Since this AMA looks like it'll get two dozen questions top and then people will stop caring, will it be the subject of your next series of cartoonized rants where you hold the world accountable for not giving you the attention you deserve?

Ted, how do you deal with the intense amount of negativity and hostility that can arise in people who disagree with your views? Online and otherwise; and I mean the particularly vicious kind of insults and comments. Is it something you just try to ignore, is it something that motivates you to keep moving, is it something that crushes your spirit? What encourages you to keep working in this direction, in the face of what must seem at times like endless antagonism or permanent apathy?

I'm a human being. Negativity hurts my feelings. Like everyone, I want to be liked. It may be that I'm particularly immune to bullying and insults because I received a lot of them as a child. I don't know. That's for a psychologist to decide. I will say that it doesn't exactly motivate me to keep going. Nor does it slow me down. It's sort of like traffic. Whether there's another car ahead of you or not, you still have to get home. I have a lot of work to do. Why does my work anger people? Most of the time, I find it's because he questions their sacred cows. Somehow the people who say I don't draw well also happen to be right-wingers, while the people who are on the left think that I draw just great.

Thank you. Speaking of bullies, I loved My War With Brian. I've been a fan of yours since I randomly stumbled on The Worst Thing I've Ever Done while working in a bookstore back in 1997. Thank you very much for your continued work.

I have already done some nonfiction comics journalism work, starting with a 1996 book about people's real confessions of the worst things that they had ever done. I am currently working on another graphic novel format biography, this one about Bernie Sanders, scheduled for publication in January. The format will be similar to this one.

I don't think these two things are often in conflict as often as the government would have you think. In fact, the past 3 directors of the CIA--Petraeus, Brennan, and Panetta have ALL disclosed undercover intelligence identities--for no public interest purpose, but rather to impress a girlfriend or to make a Hollywood movie (Zero Dark Thirty). None of them have gotten in trouble. But CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou, who confirmed that torture was an official US program, spent 2.5 years in jail for confirming the identity of an undercover agent--to a journalist--a name that never became public. It's a total double standard.

According to all published reports, and no one has been able to contradict them so far, Snowden took great pains to ensure that intelligence assets were not exposed so that no American lives were in fact in danger. This was one of the major reasons that he worked with mainstream media organizations like the Guardian, New York Times, and Washington Post. They were able to sort through the material and courage anything that might have caused harm to American national security interests. The real question is, how many American lives are at risk from mass surveillance? Considering that the Snowden revelations reveal that the United States government is terrified of its citizens, it seems that the entire system is at stake.

Probably 99% of my cartoons could have been drawn or written better or differently. Hindsight is 2020. Also I think I'm a little bit better of an artist and a writer than it used to be. There are no cartoons that I can think of off the bat that I wish I hadn't drawn at all, except for some of those that were kind of dashed off on a deadline rather than crafted carefully enough.

I loved your book After We Kill You, We Will Welcome You Back as Honored Guests: Unembedded in Afghanistan. It was a real eye opener since our media is so poor on covering war.
I also enjoyed your teaming up with Greg Palast on Billionaires & Ballot Bandits! A phenomenal read as are all his books made even better by your humorous illustrations. That is how I found out about your work!
You were in Kunduz while you were in Afghanistan. What are your thoughts on the bombing of the hospital?

Thank you, I really appreciate it.
In 2010 I was only in Kunduz long enough to get our car repaired as we passed through. At that time, it was already substantially under Taliban control. As we later learned, there was a stoning that took place at the same time we were there. I spent more time there in 2001. It was also sketchy place at that time. Kunduz has historically been a city that changed hands a lot, and its people have suffered. The last that they needed was to lose their hospital. Unfortunately, the United States bombs people in Afghanistan willy-nilly without much in intelligence about what's going on on the ground. The only reason that this has attracted so much attention was that it happened to a major NGO.

Edward Snowden was given legal asylum by Russia, but we can see in the way that Europe reacted to his case - through responses to the applications for asylum we filed for him, and the extraordinary moment when a President's plane was downed at the behest of the US - that this is clearly also a political game in which Europe is bowing to the United States. I have been living in Germany now for two years since I left Russia and can see that popular sentiments leans towards offering protection to Snowden and Assange, but Germany isn't even sure how it can maintain the independence of its intelligence services from the US. So we clearly have a long way to go until whistleblowers are protected and we need all the support we can at Courage for Snowden's defence fund (https://edwardsnowden.com/donate).

I'm heading off to give a talk about press freedom just north of Albany New York, but thank you everyone for your awesome questions and especially to Sarah and Jessalyn and the nice folks at Reddit for allowing us to do this. It was fun. I'll be back tomorrow to answer any questions that came in overnight. Ciao!

Hi, Ted. Thank you for doing this AMA. When can we expect news of your massive lawsuit against the L.A. Times, the L.A.P.D., and the police union for wrongful termination? Can you fill us in on where things stand now?

To Sarah Harrison:
Have you tried getting more diplomatic cables besides the older American ones? So far my own attempts were completely ignored by the bureaucracies, but there must be a chance to get some cables from some country in the World. Would be quite interesting.

To Sarah Harrison:
How many people have access to the WikiLeaks twitter account (roughly)? I'm asking because there often tweets that people find cringeworthy, or that are easily misunderstood, so it is a PR issue.

In the last years quite a few news organizations set up leak portals but there don't seem to be too many leakers. Do you think the costs and effort are mostly justified because one leaker might be worth it, or are these news sitesfollowing a trend?

A lot of infrastructure is just in case: fire houses, call boxes, panic buttons, insurance. You don't need them often but when you need them, you really really need them. I have to think we're better having leak portals than not.

Mr. Rall, your mother was my french teacher for a few years and she also taught my mom when she was in high school! Nothing but fond memories from those classes. I just happened across this subreddit today and your name clicked when I saw it at the top of the page. I remember your mother speaking about you and your work in class. I hope if she's still around she's doing well, best wishes.

I don't have a question; I just wanted to say how much I appreciate the work you're each doing.

I notice there seems to be a pattern of downvoting anything/everything you post; if nothing else, I'm willing to step forward and let myself be targeted for the same treatment. To the downvoters: how very mature of you.

Thank you very much. (I dislike the upvote/downvote system because it drives anything of political interest down to zero. What's really more "popular," a cat video with 1000 upvotes and 0 downvotes because who downvotes them? Or a political item with 1000 upvotes and 1000 downvotes, which was read by 2000 people who found it of interest?)

No news outlet is 100%. I take bits and pieces from here and there and try to piece together an approximation of what makes sense. RT might not be reliable about Ukraine, but they do a good job reporting on the US security state, for example. The Guardian is good on the Middle East, less so on domestic British politics. Oppositional journalism tends to be best, news reported by those WITHOUT access, from the outside looking in.